It all happened in an hour: Delhi rape accused to cops

Within an hour of kidnapping and brutally raping and subjecting to bestialities a five-year-old girl, Manoj Kumar — the accused in the east Delhi rape — took a train to his native village in Bihar from where he was arrested on Friday night.

Kumar took a train to Muzaffarpur and then reached Bharathua village in north Bihar. He stayed there a whole day and then on April 17, went to Chiknauta village -- where his in-laws live.

A joint team of Delhi and Bihar police nabbed Kumar from his in-laws's house in a late night swoop on Friday. The police were able to trace his location with the help of his mobile phone location and call detail records.

He was produced before Muzaffarpur sub-divisional judicial magistrate (SDJM) Shatrughan Prasad Singh, who handed him to Delhi Police for a three-day transit remand.

Kumar had allegedly raped, battered and brutalised the five-year-old girl and locked her to die at his rented room in east Delhi before fleeing to Bihar on April 15.

Investigators are suspecting the involvement of another man in the barbaric incident, even as senior police officers said the possibility of a second accused was unlikely.

Sources in Bihar police told HT that the joint police team had quizzed another youth of Chiknauta village for several hours, before letting him go. “He was a friend of Manoj,” the source told HT.

A three-member team Delhi Police had been camping in Bihar for the past three days.

Kumar, a casual labourer in garment factories in northeast Delhi, had fled the Capital within an hour of committing the crime on April 15. “His preliminary interrogation revealed that after locking the victim in his dark, rented room, Kumar boarded Swatantrata Senani Express and left Delhi at around 8.30 pm,” said Prabhakar, DCP (east).

After reaching Muzaffarpur the next day, Kumar went to his ancestral house in Bharathua village and stayed there for the entire day. “On April 17, he left for his in-laws’ house in Chiknauta village and remained there until his arrest,” added Prabhakar.

Muzaffarpur senior superintendent of police Saurabh Kumar said the local police had extended full co-operation to the Delhi team, leading to the arrest of Kumar.

Manoj is the second accused in a Delhi rape case to have been apprehended from Bihar. Earlier, Akshay Thakur, an accused in the December 16 gang rape, was arrested from Bihar’s Aurangabad district.